One of our city employees called me at work today to tell me that an owl was perched in a tree in the city park just a few feet above where the guys were cutting up a tree felled by a recent storm.

He said it just sat there while they worked just below it, so he figured it was sick or injured. He told me the Hutchinson Zoo would take it into their wildlife rehab program if someone could just catch it and wondered if I wanted the job.

I asked him if the owl was really white and fluffy, and if so it was a young one and would leave on its own and be just fine if left undisturbed. He acknowledged that yes, it was very fluffy, and when I stopped there an hour later it was gone already. This is the third year in a row someone has contacted us about an owl somewhere near the park that has proven to be a juvenile and soon went on its way. Evidently a pair of great horned owls have hatched and reared a single chick somewhere there in the park each spring for a few years now.

Joyce and I were first introduced to this fact two years ago when a lady living just across from the park called us about an owl that had barricaded itself behind a planter on her patio. We caught what appeared then to be a young great horned owl, named it Ozzy and kept it in a box in the laundry room overnight.

The next morning, Joyce took it to the Hutchinson Zoo which does have an excellent wildlife rehabilitation program. The lady there was amazed at what she saw. She said they are deluged each spring with young wildlife, most of which are injured, and many too badly to survive. But she took one look at Ozzy and told Joyce “You take this owl back immediately and turn it loose in the park near where it was found.”

She said it was possibly the healthiest specimen they had ever gotten, and that its parents would find it and make sure it survived. After chasing Ozzy around the park, trying to get him to stay near the trees and out of sight, we left him there and sure enough, he disappeared on his own just as she said.

I tell you this story to reiterate that it is indeed the season when new life is born into the wild, and often some of those babies are found by humans. We humans have an innate nurturing spirit within us that makes us want to capture and “help” young wildlife we find. In most cases, we are not helping at all as those babies are just fine and will be found by their mothers as soon as we leave. In fact, in some cases their mothers may even be watching. Taking a young animal from the wild actually decreases its chance of survival exponentially. It is also illegal to possess wildlife without the special permits and training like the people have that operate the Hutchinson Zoo rehab program.

It would probably have been OK to have moved Ozzy back into the park right away and left him there, as his folks might’ve had a tough time finding him behind that planter. But all-in-all, if you love wildlife babies, then leave them where you find them and trust their mothers to take care of them. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].